


Green-Eyed Witcher Woman

by kasugayamaisforlovers



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fantasy, Found Family, Gen, The Witcher - Freeform, The Witcher AU, Witcher AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22174975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasugayamaisforlovers/pseuds/kasugayamaisforlovers
Summary: All matter of strange magic and strange company finds the witcher Koriand’r of Tamaran.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Koriand'r & Garfield Logan & Raven, Dick Grayson/Koriand'r
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	Green-Eyed Witcher Woman

The wind blows in misty curtains. Koriand’r of Tamaran holds tightly to the reins of the black horse. Sol is a skilled mount, still the pass is slippery. Kory reaches out to pat the horse’s neck.

“Steady, my love,” she whispers in the old tongue, “steady.”

Sol carries them higher up the mountain. Kory pulls the soft leather hood of the short cloak further over her face. The wind gusts so that the round nose of the metal snake at her neck clangs against the metal of her cuirass. The noise makes her sit straighter in the saddle. She scans around finding nothing but sharp hips of stone jutting from the coarse grass. Mountains ring the horizon from west to east, their heads snow-covered but shrouded in heavy clouds. She and Sol are alone for now. If all goes well, they remain alone until they reach the next town.

“It’s colder than a hag’s teat out here,” Kory hisses in the common tongue. Sol neighs. Kory smirks—there are those that have argued with her, but Kory is sure that this horse speaks Common. And why not, isn’t this whole damned world filled with inexplicable magics? She lingers on this thought as they tread the path carefully over rain smoothed rocks until the trail cuts into the mountain. A narrow corridor of rock shields them from the wind. Sol’s hooves clatter and echo. The way is dark. Kory raises her palm overhead, draws a long breath and exhales a gout of flame into her palm. Her elongated shadow dances in a strange bobbing rhythm.

The wind howls and mourns outside the stone pass. “An eerie thing,” thinks Kory. It sings a song not unfamiliar to her, a song of loss and longing, a song of home. The shadows shift and warp in Kory’s mind becoming children—a boy and a girl. They cannot be. They are fever dream, a longing that should have died with Kory’s womb when she drank the mutagen formula that made her what she is. The memory constricts her chest.

Again, the shadows bend and sway as the wind wails. The flame in her hand roars and, for a wild moment, the pass is illuminated in a brilliant magenta light. The medallion at her throat thrums. Before she can reach either of the swords at her hip, she sees the glow of runes. The stone around her bears deep, glowing runes, like scars on its grey flesh.

_…a union of Moon and Sun…shall night know the blaze of stars…and both will be free…_

Kory struggles to read the whole runic phrase before the flame gutters out. She clicks Sol to a stop. She pulls a torch from her pack and, breathing deep, she calls the flame to her hand and lights the torch. The runes do not reappear. Her deep lore is shallow at best, but she is sure that this was magic of a prophetic kind. “Well shit,” she thinks. She waves the torch over the walls once more to try to make out the runes, but the stone is silent as ever, unmarred save the expected striations of weather and time.

Isn’t she unlucky enough already as a witcher, must she be plagued by a half-read prophesy as well? She sighs and mounts Sol. She clicks the mare forward and they begin again deeper into the mountain. “A union of moon and sun?” she thinks. A memory flickers half-remembered at the base of her skull: the thick smell leather and vellum, a gauzy light through the dust—the keep library. It has to be. She’s known but a few places to keep tomes like the one she’s thinking of. The metallic ‘ting’ of Master Circinus’ astrolabe tickles her ears. This has something to do with one of the lessons he tried to teach her during his inopportune, yet no-doubt destined, stay at Gorthur Gvaed.

They make their way through the mountain emerging into the more gloom and grey. Kory nudges Sol on, stopping once or twice so that the horse may water and that she may refill her pouches. Kory plans to make camp before nightfall, but as they continue on along this side of the mountain, the outcrops of rock turn to loose slabs beneath them. Finding no suitable coverage from the elements, she keeps riding. The half-read wisps of prophesy so occupying her thoughts that night catches her unaware, the grey light of day bleeding into darkness in a matter of seconds. The wind here is sharp, it whistles and sighs threatening to freeze her into her soaked clothing. The bitter, thin air here cuts at her nose and lungs and, for a moment, she actually misses the salt air of the Skelligen coast.

“Snort if you see a cave,” she says to Sol in the old tongue. No, she decides, riding Sol is far preferable to rocking and lurching on a Skelligen knarr. The air here is thin, but at least it doesn’t smell of her sick. She nudges the horse onto the narrow path that descends the mountain in a gradual, weaving switch back. She has a potion that will allow her body immunity from the elements, but as her numbed fingers fumble through the wooden potion box she can’t seem to find it. Kory strings together a colorful barrage of curses and Sol bucks gently.

“You don’t get an opinion on this, horse,” she rebuts. Sol stiffens. Kory looks up. In a cradle of rock where the mountain flattens into a wide plateau, pinpricks of light shine through the inky darkness—luminous silver lights dance around a warm fire light. Even from here, the wind carries the muffled clatter of a fight.

“On!” commands Kory spurring Sol. They ride the switchbacks at a quickened but cautious pace until the path straightens and they can gallop. Nearing the lights Kory makes out a campfire and a wagon. She need come no nearer to guess at the silver lights: nightwraiths. Kory’s hand grazes the ribbed pommel of her silver yataghan. She hopes to X’Hal that none of these travelers are cursed to whirl in the mad dance of the nightwraith. She has no wish to use her steel sword.

The rain dies out, but the wind is ceaseless as she rides. Four nightwraiths pitch and hiss around a green and gold lacquered, wood-roofed wagon. Her medallion thrums against her cuirass like a high pitched bell. A cloakless man armored in only in a set of patchy leather pauldrons and a leather breastplate continuously herds the wraiths from the wagon. He tumbles and spins between them, occasionally raining heavy blows on them with double staves. A strange fighting style, like the music of an adventurous bard, yet the fact that he still lives is a testament to his skill.

Kory dismounts at a run behind one of the wraiths brandishing both yataghans in a defensive posture infront of her. The skeletal thing wheezes an unnatural breath its foul, decaying odor wafting down at Kory as it turns. The tattered rags of the wraith’s once human clothing trails from it in all directions floating weightless just as the thing itself floats. Its skin has not yet completely rotted away and it screams at Kory with the bald, leathering face of someone who once had a name. The teeth of its lipless mouth are barred as it lunges at Kory. Its boney fingers clawing and scratching at the air as Kory dodges at superhuman speeds. Kory holds her yataghans in a reverse grip, punching forward—right, left—catching the bone of the wraith’s chest. The wraith claws at her, howling. Kory dips left, punches again left, right, along the wraith’s arm. Kory spins. The wraith is too slow. Now behind the creature, she punches forward again—right, left, right. The final blow of the silver sword hacks through the wraith causing it to explode into a blinding pop of white-green light. 

The cloakless man’s head whips toward the light. His brown hair clinging in shoulder length ropes along his skull as he dances around a pair of wraiths knocking them back with his staves.

“The wagon,” he yells. Kory nods running to the wagon where a wraith claws and shakes at the door, howling. The screams of children pour from the wagon. Kory runs faster. The wraith sees her and spins to face her. Just then, the door of the wagon blows open with a bang. A darkness, darker even than the night shadows cast by the campfire, spews from the open door. The ring of the medallion increases in pitch. Kory grips her silver yataghan tighter. She ducks as the wraith sails toward her. The temperature here is colder. The undulating darkness from the wagon crackles through the wind. Kory turns landing a cross cutting blow on the creature as the darkness engulfs it, swallowing its silver light.

“Raven!” yells the man from behind her, the sound of his hurried footfalls nearing Kory. The witcher steps away from the wagon keeping it, the man, and the last two wraiths within her line of sight. A wraith sails toward the man grabbing at his collar. In a moment of pure instinct Kory reels back and chucks the silver sword at the wraith. She runs to intercept the wounded creature so the man can pass. She breathes deep into the fire of her belly and draws forth the red flame, incinerating the creature in a plume of corpse scented smoke as her hand meets it.

The man agiley turns to catch a blow of the last wraith’s claws, saving Kory from an ugly gash to the back of the neck. He hisses with pain and kicks it back as Kory retrieves her silver sword from the sodden grass.

“Go!” she yells cutting into the wraith. This time he nods swinging the staves back into his belt and jumping onto the front of the wagon. To her right the magical darkness slithers over the grass toward her and the wraith. Kory can hear the frantic intermingle of voices within the wagon though with the pounding of blood in her ears and the gusts of wind she cannot make out the words.

The wraith charges to bite at her and Kory deftly cuts upward with the silver sword forcefully enough to rend the skeletal head from its frame. Its body explodes into a white-green light as it evaporates. Kory sidesteps the darkness nearing her feet. The wagon is rocking like it’s caught in a wave.

“…Gar help me with this...oh shit! _Shit!”_

“Dick!”

And then there comes a piercing scream. Kory runs to the wagon door through the burning darkness. She yanks it open and the wagon ceases to shake. Within, the lantern lights suspended on hooks along the paint-embellished walls sway. Strange shadows spins and bend absorbing like liquid into a young, unconscious girl on the floor. She lays in the arms of the man. He whispers to her softly running his right hand down her face as his left arms hangs limply around her. A youth, no older than fifteen stares saucer eyed at the girl, shivering visibly.

Kory steps into the wagon and the two travelers look up at her.

“Take care of Raven,” the man says to the boy. The boy, clothed in a fur lined hat, green tunic and striped pants nods. His dark hair falls into his eyes, ashamed. Kory averts her eyes. The man nods to the witcher, signaling that he wishes to speak outside.

She steps back out of the wagon. The wind continues to blow but feels comparatively calm now. The wraiths are gone, leaving only charred patches of grass to mark where they’d been. The warm smell of sweat and people and onions and soup drifts from the wagon settling Kory’s pulse. Looking out to the end of the long plateau, Kory can see a small lake of glimmering lights which she knows to be the next township. Not alone now, she thinks with a wash of happiness.

“We took the long way around the mountain,” says the man pointing to the caravan. “We were lucky for the entire trip and then a half-day from the village we get attacked.”

Kory nods. “This area sees many wraiths, especially in the winter months. Allow me to accompany to town tomorrow,” she offers.

“Thank you,” he says. He lays a faded but richly pattern blanket over a boulder by the fire. “Will you warm yourself?”

Kory nods and adjusts the sheathes at her hips.

“You’re very skilled with those,” he marvels motioning his head toward her. Kory pulls the hood from her face to thank him for his compliment and the use of his fire.

“Wait! You’re the green-eyed witcher!” he exclaims. “Excuse me,” he says standing to bow. “I don’t mean to be so animated. It’s just...an unexpected pleasure, lady witcher.”

“Koriand’r of Tamaran,” Kory says with a polite bow and sincerely hoping that their conversation will return to the casual tone it had a moment ago.

“Richard Nightwing,” he says mirroring her bow. There’s a beat of silence as Richard stares holes into the scabbard on her left hip. “Sorry, but might I…”

Kory chuckles, appreciating his enthusiasm, and pulls the silver yataghan from her hip. The sword is roughly four handspans long, short by the standards of these lands. The blade is recurved: blunt on the outside and edged within curving back up into a nasty point like a knife.

“I’ve never seen such a thing,” he marvels crossing over to her. “May I?”

Kory nods and he runs his leather gloved hands over her own as he takes the hilt. Kory swears she feels a thrumming and is surprised to find that the medallion is still.

“Ah,” he says turning the jade hilt in his hands, “it’s a snake.”

“A viper,” she corrects.

“The balance is surprising. I don’t usually enjoy bladed weapons but this…” he looks up into her eyes. The gaze is long and direct, “is beautiful,” he mutters, “…uhm. Pardon. Pardon. I don’t know what came over me, asking a sword of a witcher.” He’s blushing. He hands back the sword and attempts nonchalance as they stand by the fire. Kory bites back a laugh. Richard’s been so sure of his movements up until now.

“I met a witcher once before, but that was many years ago,” he says looking into the fire, “What they say of your skills is not exaggerated.” He looks at her again with his eyes of roasted chestnut.

“My thanks,” she says casually and perhaps proudly as she spins the sword before returning it to its sheath. She sits down on the blanketed stone and he sits beside her.

**

The next morning Kory repacks her fire-dried possessions into Sol’s saddle bags. Richard wakes up the children tasking them with gathering kindling and serving breakfast as he sees to the pair of donkeys that pull their wagon.

“AH! You’re! You’re! The green-eyed witcher!” exclaims the boy, bouncing.

“Gar,” admonishes Richard from behind them.

“I’m calm!” Gar shoots back. He looks up at Kory with a wide smile. “It’s really you! The starfire of Gorthur Gvaed! Slayer of necrophages and specters. I heard you were in Skellige.”

“To slay the Morvudd. I’ve just returned,” laughs Kory.

“Breakfast!” shouts Raven from the fire. She’s toasted bread and tomatoes and poured ale from the wagon into four tall flagons. Everyone congregates to eat. Kory is very glad at the meal and the company. She’s traveled a fortnight on jerky and hardtack only occasionally stumbling into a traveler or an edible herb. The crunch of the toast is music to her ears, the tang of tomatoes a rapturous pleasure.

“You really like tomatoes huh?” asks Gar laughing into his ale.

“She hasn’t eaten anything real in a while,” explains Raven. Kory looks at her and the girl shrugs. “Am I wrong?” Kory shakes her head no. Richards eyes dart between his wards and the witcher. Kory continues to eat, pretending not to notice.

“Tell us about the Morvudd?” asks Gar. Kory is licking the residual tomato juice from her fingers.

“Well its antlers are about thrice the size of a man’s armspan,” she starts. Gar’s eyebrow tickle his hair line. “It’s a viscous beast with a coarse mane and a wicked bite. When it roars you can feel the reverberations rippling through your chest.” Gar squeaks in pleasure turning into a little monkey and somersaulting about. Kory stands in surprise. Looking between Raven and Richard, she feels foolish as both of them are carrying on normally, drinking their ale.

“They call him the Changeling,” says Raven with a bemused smirk. “This is quite ordinary for him.” She places a hand on Kory’s elbow and the taller woman sits back down. If he were a monster her medallion would have warned her. Then again, sitting this close to Raven, it remains at a low hum. Raven wears her shoulder length black hair loose around her rounded shoulders. Kory envies the freedom this signifies. Raven lives outside the normal order of women. She is free. She will remain free to pursue the pull of her own whims. Kory looks into her tankard and is met by the reflection of her own, unnatural eyes and the glimmer of gold wire that adorns her tight plaits.

“And you, sorceress?” _What do they call you?_ Kory starts to ask. The girl looks up at her with her strange red eyes and Kory can guess. Instead Kory asks, “where are you wandering?”

The young sorceress places a light, cool hand on Kory’s arm. “I am not so free as you think,” she says in a low voice. They call me Raven var Azarath, the cursed child, the Devil’s Door.” The little witch’s red eyes peer into Kory’s eyes and Kory knows without knowing that the girl sees more than her reflection. The witcher feels a crest of sadness wash from the girl. She squeezes little witch’s hand and the girl smiles. It is a beautiful, natural smile that reminds Kory that the girl’s milk teeth are not so long gone. A girl so young should not be yoked with so heavy a weight, thinks Kory.

The witcher turns her attention to the brown-haired man. He’s attractive enough in the daylight, if not a little dirty.

“What is your business, Richard Nightwing? For what purpose do you wander with these children?”

“We’re a traveling show,” interrupts the boy cheerfully, tugging on his pants beneath the cover of his cloak. Kory chokes on her ale.

“I beg your pardon?” Kory asks coughing.

“We’re quite good,” answers the little witch. “I can do illusions and read minds, Gar can take the form of various animals and Richard is an expert tumbler and not bad at juggling either.”

Kory turns opened mouthed toward the brown-haired man in his doubled tunic of blue on grey and soft leather pants. He shrugs bolstering the flame absentmindedly with the twigs scattered at his feet.

“‘Expert’, eh?” he asks with a toothy smile.

“And a not bad juggler,” the little witch laughs. Richard brushes the dirt from his fingers as he stands up.

“Would it be vulgar to trade coin for a performance?” asks the witcher pulling a silver coin from the recesses of a pouch stitched to the inside bottom of her gambeson. The boy is already leaning forward to pluck the coin from her fingers when Richard tuts.

“It would be vulgar seeing as you came to our aid only last night.” He glares reproachfully at the boy who tucks his hands into his pockets as though they’d been there all along. Kory giggles returning the silver coin to the pouch.

Richard pulls a wooden ball from his pocket. Seeing this Gar, Gar pulls a kerchief from his bag, sets a rock into its middle, knots it into a ball, and tosses it to Richard. Raven tosses him a stoppered bottle. Richard looks to Kory, thick eyebrows expectant. Kory rummages through her saddle bags before settling on a smooth-edged sun rune. Richard is already juggling the objects in a fast circle as Kory decides on her object.

He nods to the witcher to toss the rune and when she does he sends all four objects into the air and spins. He catches the things and again they whirl around him in a circle. His arms loop this way and that. He bounces the ball off his hip and his knee and his foot. He returns it to the rhythm of the other items. The glass bottle he catches and sets on his forehead as he bends backwards juggling the rune, the ball and the kerchief. Still doubled over backwards, he manages to catch the kerchief such that it unravels and then snatches the rune and the ball within it. He pulls the bottle from his forehead and dumps it into his pocket tumbling into two kart wheels and then a whirl without any hands at all.

Kory is beyond impressed. She laughs and claps freely and is happy to find that Gar and Raven seem to be enjoying themselves just as much as she is. Richard’s tumbling comes to a halt as he returns to sit beside Kory. Kory can’t stop smiling at him. Richard laughs, a little red on the ears.

“Well you’ve seen my trick already, but I’m sure you’ll still be impressed,” remarks Gar tossing off his fur lined cap. “Gah! It’s cold out here,” he shivers as he unhooks his cloak. He disappears into the fabric of the forest greet cloak. A little greenish fox crawls from the cloak. It yips and races to and fro. It runs up the back of a stone and, leaping into the air, morphs into a hawk. The great bird soars high, circling over head before plummeting back to the earth. As it nears them, it shifts into a swallow and then a songbird, perching on Raven shoulder.

“I’m not singing,” Raven tells the bird plainly. The bird chirps the melody to a ballad that Kory can’t quite place. The bird nudges the little witch’s cheek. Raven giggles. “No Gar.” The bird cheeps sadly and flaps to Richard’s shoulder. Richard chuckles and turns to Kory.

“Sing along if you know it,” he laughs. He clears his throat.

“ _Ku vate moti c'ish nje here_

_Kur u e ti zemir duhshim shume mire_

_Ku vate moti c'ish nje here_

_Kur u e ti zemir duhshim shume mire”_ he sings.

His voice is warm and strong, though not always on key. Kory doesn’t know the song, can’t even place the language, otherwise she _would_ join in. As the chorus arrives the bird begins to chirp and Raven joins her voice to the music.

_“Ohi Lule lule_

_Ohi Lule lule_

_Ohi Lule lule mace mace,”_ they sing, whistling and stomping.

Kory claps along. The song lasts several minutes, and by the end even Kory knows the chorus.

“Would you like your fortune read?” asks the little witch pulling Kory’s hand from her lap. Kory’s mind jumps back to the corridor of rock and glowing runes.

“I would rather see an illusion,” says Kory sweetly lifting her hand from the girl’s short fingers. The girl shrugs and closes her eyes. Her hands hover at either side of Kory’s head.

Kory sees the red irises of the little witch for a split second before the world fades to black and reforms into the bone colored, non-Euclidean architecture of home. The supple tendrils of lush green plants hug the rolling curves of the towering buildings as the sound of bird song blends with that of laughing voices. The air is muggy and smells of spices and cocoa and matted grass sandals. Kory turns around and the intricately molded headdress on her head jingles.

From the end of the teeming market street, bright with the innumerable wares of a thousand vendors, and the bustle of hundreds of dark-skinned, loosely clothed people she sees a pair of children walking toward her. Knowing, as one knows in dreams, that they belong to her she runs forward.

“What did you see,” smiles Raven appearing in front of the witcher as suddenly as she had disappeared before. Kory holds onto the rock beneath her to steady herself.

“Lady witcher?” asks Raven holding her arm. Kory looks around to see the stone-pocked flatness of the plateau, the smoke from the town in the distance, the ring of snow-capped mountains. But what of Tamaran, she wonders to herself.

“Koriand’r?” asks Richard from beside them. Kory takes a long swig of ale.

“Thank you all for the performance,” she says stiffly.

“Perhaps it’s time we make our way,” he offers. Kory throws him a weak smile, and he gives a nearly imperceptible bow. That gives Kory a real smile. She catches him smiling back. The little witch catches it too.

Kory gives a loud whistle and Sol canters over. A strange company, thinks Kory watching the three travelers pile their few belonging back into the wagon, but not unpleasant.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Dick sings is Lule Lule by BGKO.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed this strange little one-shot. Toss a comment to your witcher. <3


End file.
